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8 February 2012

Double Fake - Imitations at Berlin Potsdamer Platz

At times of the Berlinale film festival,
one heads out to Berlin Potsdamer Platz quite frequently. I recently took a
couple of pictures of the remains of the potemkin village in the heart of
Berlin's inner city.

The Potsdamer Platz and its adjacent Leipziger Platz, got
rebuilt as the new (old) downtown city center according to local urban
planners. In order to not be too dependent on investment the city decided to
build fake buildings instead: Huge scaffoldings dressed in banners with
facade printing anticipate what once will be. The last remaining giant is the
scaffolding separating Leipziger Platz from Potsdamer Platz. Together with its
twin (an actual building) they articulate a symmetric gate seen from the one
side, and enclose the octagon of Leipziger Platz from the other side. The area
got completely destroyed during the bombings of WW II; after the Wende, Leipziger Platz got restored in
plan. However many of the new buildings are reminiscent of the 1920s era. Therefore,
with its huge buildings and high-rises, this part of the New Berlin imitates
North American downtowns such as New York or Chicago. Like in other parts of the city, current urban planning tries to imitate the image of the Golden
Twenties when Berlin was the flourishing, densely populated capital of Weimar
Republic. Only 1920s
Berlin never looked like 1920s New York. Arguably the contemporary Potsdamer
Platz has an aura of a double fake: buildings that are not buildings, and new buildings
that pretend to be old. These are conspicuous symptoms of both, the city
struggling with its past and the image the contemporary metropolis aspires to
create.

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The city is made up of assemblages built of heterogeneous networks and associations. Multiple and overlapping enactments constitute urban life as a synchronous city.SYNCHRONICITY is a blog excavating these networks and setting them in relationship to each other. SYNCHRONICITYunderstands itself as an extended platform sharing myriad approaches in urbanism, landscape and architecture.